


where the green things are

by starkillerjones (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fanart, Finnrey, Kinda Fluffy, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22183705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/starkillerjones
Summary: Rey steals a car, and then she steals Finn's heart.Finn just wants to get away from the First Order, but somewhere along the way he falls for the girl in the stolen blue Corillean.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	where the green things are

“Fuck you, Jakku!”

Rey gives the dirty dead-end desert town hunkered down in the rear-view mirror the finger. She’s headed north and west, chasing down the ocean in her dreams, and her parents.

Ten miles outside of town she comes across the hitchhiker. At least she thinks he’s hitching. A lone dark-skinned figure shuffling along on the verge of exhaustion; a dead man walking. A tan leather jacket is draped over his head like a makeshift _keffiyeh_.

Rey pulls over and leans across the passenger seat. “Hey, are you okay? Do you need a ride?”

He stares at her like she’s a mirage. She may as well be: pretty white girl in a blue Trans Am. Cracked lips move but his mouth is too dry to form words.

She has to fight the door release before it pops. “Get in.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice and half collapses into the passenger seat. The driver puts the car in gear and reaches behind her as she pulls away, retrieves a canteen and passes it to him. Watches him throw his head back and take long greedy gulps out of the corner of her eye.

“Thanks,” he says eventually, breathlessly. “For…” He gestures vaguely with the canteen. “You’re the first person who’s stopped.”

“I’m not surprised. You need to work on your technique. It’s all in the thumbs.”

He manages a small smile, more out of the relief that accompanies an unexpected rescue than any real humor for the situation. Technique’s got nothing to do with it. “I guess people are careful about picking up strangers. I mean, I could be a serial killer.” He takes another sip and catches her watching him. “_Not_ that I’m a serial killer or anything.”

She chuckles and offers him her hand, eyes still on the road. “I’m Rey.”

“Finn.” He shakes.

“Where’re you headed, Notaserialkiller Finn?”

“Anywhere. Just as long as it’s away from this place.” Far, _far_ away. “How about you?”

“Same.” Then: “Just as long as there are green things.”

“Green things?”

“Trees, plants. Some place with chlorophyll. You know, the opposite of Jakku.”

“I hear that.” He scans the car’s interior—the gold die hanging from the rear-view mirror, the rust spots, the lining missing from the driver’s side door. What a piece of junk. “Cool ride.”

“Thanks!” Rey beams proudly. “You know what this car is, right?”

_A Corillean?_ Finn shrugs helplessly. _A death trap?_

“This is _the_ Falcon.”

“The Falcon?”

“As in the _Millennium_ Falcon?”

“Oh, right, no, of course,” he plays along earnestly, “the Millennium Falcon.” _I knew that._

But there’s no fooling her. “You have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Absolutely none. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Not everyone knows a piece of automotive history when they see it. The Falcon made the Kessel Run in twelve hours.”

And maybe that rings a bell. “That’s the, uh…”

“The cross-country outlaw road race through Akkadese,” Rey fills him in, “along a route used by smugglers for the cartels.”

“Cartels?” her new companion asks, nervously.

“You know, like Pyke and Hutt. The First Order are the big ones now. But you probably already know that, being from Jakku and all.”

Finn shifts uncomfortably and the seat creaks in protest. “Not really. I was just passing through.”

“Lucky you. I’ve lived there my whole life. As long as I can remember, anyway. The Falcon is my ticket out of there.” She squeezes the steering wheel like the arm of an old friend and leans almost conspiratorially towards him, about to let him in on a little secret. “I found it in a junkyard.”

“No way!” Finn hopes his sarcasm doesn’t translate.

“Yes way! Just sitting there like nobody’s business! So, I made it mine.”

“Wow.”

“I know, I couldn’t believe it either.” She’s practically giddy. _I still can’t!_ “Han Solo’s a legend. Chewbacca, too.”

“Chew-who?” Not that has any genuine interest. He’s just making polite conversation, trying to stay in the girl’s good books. Talking about cars and this Solo person seems a good way to do that.

“Chewie. I read somewhere that Han won the Falcon in a card game. He was something of a gambler. That’s why he entered the Kessel Run in the first place. The prize money was supposed to cover some gambling debt or something. And they _won,_ in _this_ car…in _twelve hours—_a record that still stands.”

“Cool,” says Finn, because it’s something to say.

“I’m going to break it someday.” When she looks at him her eyes are full of promise and pure joy, and he believes her. She could tell him the moon was made of cheese and he’d believe her…if she was looking at him like that. “’Course, it still needs some work.” A _lot_ of work, if she’s honest with herself. “A few gremlins I need to sort out, but it’ll get us where we’re going. Don’t you worry.”

That smile again. Finn responds with one of his own and it seems to say: _Worried? Who’s worried?_

Finn is _worried_.

He’s standing beside Rey, looking down at the insides of the Falcon, like two people gathered at the mouth of a grave.

“Know anything about cars?” she asks.

“A little,” he allows. Of precisely _nothing_. They’re supposed to get you from A to B. They’re definitely not supposed to cut out and leave you stranded on the roadside barely a hundred miles from your starting point.

“Don’t worry.”

“You keep saying that.” She ignores him and Finn realizes: _She’s talking to the damn car_. “I can fix this.” With determination, she shrugs out of her flannel overshirt, cinches it around her waist, and marches back to the trunk where she retrieves a toolbox so heavy she needs both arms to carry it.

“Want some help with that?” he offers, trying to make himself useful.

“I can manage.” She can, barely. Rey’s strong, in a stubborn sort of way.

The toolbox looks as beat up as the car. A long time ago someone took a marker to the side and wrote: PLUTT’S SCRAPYARD & MOTOR SPARES in block letters, but they’re smudged, the ink chipped and peeling. Finn asks, “Who’s Plutt?”

“Just some blobfish I used to work for.” _Indentured servitude is more like it_. “Don’t worry about him.”

Again with the ‘don’t worry’. _I’m starting to _really_ not like when you say that_. “Why do you still have his stuff?”

“I dunno. Not his stuff anymore, I suppose.”

He watches her dig around in the box. “Wait, did you _steal_ this?” And then a far worse thought occurs to him. “Did you steal _this car?”_

“Of course not!” Rey snaps, thrusting a wrench at him like a knife. Then, because she can see she’s given him a bit of a fright, she regains some of her composure and elaborates with a kind of stiff innocence, “I took it as payment.”

Finn is almost afraid to ask. “Payment for what?”

“The way he treated me all those years. If my parents had known…just wait till they hear—and they _will_ hear…when I find them.” She’s angry and distracted, but not by whatever’s wrong with the Falcon. She leans over the car with the wrench. “Pass me those pliers.”

“Which ones? There’s like ten different kinds.”

“Needle nose.” She’s pointing, but she may as well be pointing at _everything_ so it takes Finn a minute to pick the correct ones.

She turns back to the engine, leaning over as far as she can, digging around. “I bet that arsehole won’t even notice it’s missing. Or me. For all he ever cared.”

_Yeah? Let’s hope_. Finn looks up and down the highway, remembering that the last car they passed was a highway patrol vehicle. And that was intimidating enough _before_ he found out he was riding with little Miss Grand Theft Auto. If that thing does a U-turn, they’re screwed. He’s never liked guns—hated using them when he was forced to by the cartel. But he’s never wanted one more in his entire life. “This Plutt guy…he’s not connected to the cartel, is he?”

“Don’t think so.” Rey shrugs, the spaghetti strap of her cami top slipping off her shoulder. Finn stares, relieved. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was…guy like him.” _Damnit, Rey_. “All right, I think I’ve got it. Fire it up.”

He slides behind the wheel and turns the key in the ignition. It turns over but doesn’t start. _Please._

“Keep trying,” Rey calls.

_Pleasepleaseplease_.

And, finally, it takes.

“Woo!” Fin slams his palms against the steering column triumphantly.

“Hey!” Rey admonishes, dropping the hood. “Be gentle.” But she’s smiling, strands of hair sticking to her perspiration-glittered face.

He grins back. He can’t help himself.

When the car cut out, when he found out it was boosted, Finn’s plan was to separate—to get away from her. It’s bad enough he betrayed the cartel, she’ll only make his situation worse. But something happens between there and the next town: a place of rickety railroad junctions and boarded-up bygone better-days storefronts. He begins to feel like he should tag along—not because she needs him…he gets the feeling she’s never really needed anyone—but because he needs her.

“Here, I’ve got…” Finn leafs through the notes. Half of what Poe had on him. “It’s not much, but it should cover my half of the gas and maybe dinner.”

“You don’t have to,” says Rey, with the pained awkwardness of someone who’s never accepted help in their life because none has ever been offered. She’s hurting. Niceness _hurts_ her. And that’s what really gets Finn. “I was always leaving Jakku, with or without you.”

“I can pay you more when we get to the coast.” That’s a lie; he can’t. But he’ll find a way.

“Thank you.” He watches her fold the cash and tuck it into the right hip pocket of her jeans riding low on her hip bone. “We’ll be there in a day or two.”

“Cool.” And this time he means it.

Fifty-five, sixy-five…Rey blows past those pesky speed limit signs and they make good time as they outrace the sun. Across parched flat ranch land, making for a set of ill-defined blue hills in the distance. By midday those same hills are the broken teeth of a snow-capped range, cutting across the landscape like some great divide. Rock and peyote give way to grasses and lazy hills rolling in the sunshine.

The radio crackles as they gain altitude and they laugh and cringe and argue as they dial through stations (she likes folk, he likes death metal but country is all there is). One thousand, two thousand, three thousand feet. Cruising along asphalt curves until they emerge into an alpine forest and the Falcon begins to drift dangerously toward the yellow line, as Rey is awed by the majesty of ponderosa and lodgepole crowed together in an undulating carpet of _green_.

“Whoa, Rey!” Finn grabs the wheel, his hand clasped on hers and steers them back into the right-hand lane.

“Sorry!” She’s white-knuckles the steering column, tears in her eyes (and _not_ from almost finding herself in oncoming traffic).

He doesn’t take his hand from hers until she pulls over to a rest-stop on a bend overlooking a narrow valley. “Are you okay?”

She’s a long time answering and when she does, her voice is a whisper, like she’s found herself in some sacred place. “I’ve never seen so much green.”

She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, inhaling the smell of a hot engine and pine needles and the fresh nothingness of air at altitude. Breathes out. And then she’s out of the car. Finn follows. After hours in a bucket seat, his legs feel like they belong to someone else. She’s got energy of a jackrabbit—“This is _amazing!_ Finn! Green things! A proper _forest!”_

It’s like watching a firework explode. Bright and beautiful and all over the place. If he touches her he’ll get burned. So he finds some other way to reach her. There’s a map in the glovebox, and he can more or less work out where they are: the edge of a national forest bisected by the roadway. When he looks up from the map, she’s climbing over the guard rail and descending the slope.

_What the—? _“Rey?” He trails after her, descending with less surety than she clearly has. “Rey, I think we should go back. There might be snakes.”

She doesn’t hear him, or chooses not to, plunging ahead through the trees.

“And bears.” He looks glances suspiciously around him. “Bears, Rey!”

“I don’t think this is bear country.”

“No, this is probably definitely—”

“_Finn!”_

_Shit. Bears._ He comes running, emerges from the closeness of the sloped forest though into a clearing with a narrow creek, bordered by walls of weathered limestone and dolomite. There are no bears, only a deep artesian spring—part of an ancient underwater cave or sinkhole whose roof must have collapsed long ago. The water is crystal clear, descending from surface translucence through greens to a deep karstic blue.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” says Rey. She steps down toward the edge so she can get a better look at the spring: cool and inviting in the afternoon heat. Steals a glance at Finn, sly and playful. Like sunlight dancing on water. “Feel like a swim?”

“No. No way.”

“What’s the matter? Can’t you swim?”

“I can swim.”

“Got a thing about heights?”

“Kinda, yeah.” And then she gets _way_ too close to the edge. His stomach does a backflip up into his throat.

“It’s not even that high. Like twenty feet, maybe?”

“Rey, that’s _high.”_

“But you’re hitting water and look: you can see all the way to the bottom so it’ll be all right. Not like you’ll break your neck or anything.”

“_Gee,_ that makes me feel _so_ much better.”

She shrugs with carefree dismissiveness: an English rose in the California sun. “Suit yourself, I’m going in.” She kicks off her sneakers, pulls off her little black cami top and shucks out of her jeans. Finn averts his gaze nervously even though it’s not like she’s naked or anything. But he doesn’t want her to catch him staring deliberately and think he’s some pervert.

She walks back to give herself a little run-up.

Finn doesn’t think he’s brave. He’s not good with heights, and he _hates_ spiders. But Rey makes him want to be brave. She makes him _want_.

“Wait.” He doesn’t quite look her in the eyes because he’s scared that if he does he’ll lose his nerve. “I’ll do it.”

“Yeah?”

With more confidence than he feels: “Yeah.”

“Yeah!” She cheers.

Finn removes his jacket and lays it down carefully, strips down until they’re both in their underwear.

“We’ll go together, all right?” Rey offers, sensing his trepidation.

He nods, more out of trying to psyche himself up (because he still has doubts) than any real commitment. But when she takes his hand, that’s it. That’s all he needs and he’s all the way in. For the rest of his life.

Hand in hand they leap, shrieking, free as wild horses, plunging into the creek.

Ice cold water distilled in deep places of the world swallows them up.

“Fuck _me,_ that’s cold,” Finn manages through chattering teeth when he emerges.

“Fre-freezing,” Rey agrees, though from her trembling smile she has no regrets than he does.

They’re so close he can make out the smattering of freckles along her hairline.

“I think I’m having a heart attack.”

He’s about to have another one.

“Not bad for someone who’s scared of heights. That’s thirty feet right there.”

Finn looks up at the cliff then back at her, his face registering surprise. “You said it was twenty, _maybe.” _

She laughs. _Fooled ya!—_Shrieks when Finn play-grabs for her.

Their whoops and laughter echo in their secret swimming hole as they take turns jumping from high places. When they tire the two of them stretch themselves out on the rocks and bake until their shadows grow long like second skins sewed on at toes. A girl named Peter and a lost boy, forever-children for an afternoon, where the green things are.

“I never want to leave this place,” says Rey, dreamily.

Finn watches her, allows himself to really look at her. Like she’s some guilty pleasure. “I mean, it’s pretty, but it probably gets cold in the winter. Probably snows.”

“I’ve never seen snow.”

_White and soft…_ “It’d get lonely, too. You’d need someone to keep you company.” _Keep you warm._

“I’m used to being on my own. I like it better that way, actually.” And then Rey realizes how that must sound. “Not you, of course. You’re okay. I like you. Just in general, you know?”

_She likes me_. “What about your family? You said you had parents.”

“_Have_ parents,” she corrects. “Somewhere. That’s where I’m going: to find them.”

“When was the last time you saw them?”

“Not since I was a little girl. But I know they’re out there. Something must have happened to stop them coming back for me. They wouldn’t have left in that place on purpose, with that disgusting blobfish.” There’s a sadness about her, something she tries hard to cover up with her smile and hope. Sometimes it slips through, that vulnerability, but she’s never vulnerable for long. “Right.” She stands up, all business: the girl who boosts cars from desert junkyards and takes impromptu dips in mountains pools. “You ever been camping, Finn?”

“Camping?”

“Build a fire, sleep under the stars, that sort of thing.”

Sometimes the kids the cartel recruited would have to camp outside in the desert, when a shipment was coming up or when they were watching for thieves or rivals. But it wasn’t the fun kind of camping. You were awake all night, cradling a gun that was almost as big as you were. Nobody sang Kumbaya. “Not really.”

“I think we should camp here tonight. It’ll be a good night for it and we’ll save on a motel.”

It’s not like Finn has a say, but he’s thinking about bears again. And _bats_. “I don’t think we’re allowed to.” Like _that’s_ gonna stop her.

“I didn’t see any signs, did you?”

“No, but it’s national forest. I don’t think—”

“We’ll be careful. It’ll be fun, you’ll see!” she calls back as she begins picking her way over strewn boulders, back up to retrieve her clothes.

She has so little and she shares so much: her meager provisions (a party-size bag of Lays and Oreos), her sleeping bag (which she unzips and lays out like a picnic blanket before the fire). Finn has the option of sleeping in the car—and she wouldn’t fault him if he did—but it’s a no-brainer really. Those bats better just watch themselves.

So they camp above the swimming hole and she teaches him the proper way to eat Oreos (lift, lick, suck)—and he tells her about the cartel. She doesn’t say anything, at first, just listens. Puts an arm around him, comfortingly, and rests her chin on his shoulder. An anchor of empathy.

This is nice. He could get used to this—he’s already used to her—enough that he gives her his jacket when the night deepens and the temperature drops.

“This the one your friend gave you?”

“Poe.” It feels like forever since he said that name out loud. “He helped me get out of that situation.”

“Sounds like a good friend.”

“Yeah,” he echoes, savoring the warmth of her closeness. “He was.” Even though the truth is he and Poe didn’t know one another. Their friendship was transactionary: you help me, I help you.

“What happened to him?” she asks, gently.

“We got separated. There’s a bar his people hang out at. I’m hoping I can find him there. So I can give it back to him.”

“You _will_ find him. Don’t give up. _Never_ give up.” And Finn’s not entirely sure they’re still talking about him or her parents, but Rey takes his hand and squeezes so he doesn’t have a complaint coming.

_You gotta kiss her. Now. Just do it. Just lean in. She’d be into it. She likes you._ And he gets so caught up in his indecisiveness that he doesn’t realize Rey has let go.

“Finn.”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been holding out on me.” In place of his hand she’s holding a hip flask.

“That’s not mine.”

“It was in your jacket pocket.”

“It must be Poe’s.”

“Would he mind? Would _you?”_

Finn shakes his head, watches her unscrew the cap and sniff at the contents. With a shrug, she takes a sip. A second later her face scrunches up and she gags. His first thought it that maybe it _isn’t_ alcohol, but some suicide potion for in case Poe didn’t want to be taken alive—

“God, that’s _disgusting!_ I’ve tasted motor oil better than that.” She sticks her tongue all the way out and makes a _blech_ sound in her throat, presses the back of her hand to her lips.

“What? What is it?” Finn is half appalled, half curious—all relieved that it isn’t some toxin.

“I think it’s supposed to be whiskey, or something.” With emphasis on the _something_. She passes him the flask. “Careful, it kicks.”

Finn draws the flask under his nose, cautiously. “I can’t smell anything.”

“You’ll taste it, believe me.”

She’s right and his face makes such a fuss he has her doubled over, laughing. They goof around late into the night, chancing nips at the flask—the liquor becoming easier to stomach the more inebriated they get. Until they can feel the heat of their pathetic little we’ll-be-careful fire in their bones and the stars cartwheel overhead and Rey is passed out, snoring. Finn knows he’ll regret this in the morning. But not as much he regrets not kissing her.

Regret is wanting to kiss a girl and not kissing her, and knowing now you never will.

In the morning he feels bad, but Rey feels worse. It’s more than a hangover, because when Finn cups his palm to her forehead it feels hot, feverish.

“I think you had too much sun.”

“That’s impossible.” Not a girl from Jakku, where all there is is sun. “It was that lighter fluid we drank.”

_That, too, probably_. “Want me to drive? Because I can drive.” He leaves out the part about him not having a license or the fact that his head feels like she took one of her wrenches to it.

“No, that’s all right, I’ll be fine.”

But she isn’t fine.

After an hour on the road, she pulls over and scrambles down the gravel embankment to heave the thin, watery contents of her stomach into the scrub.

“Rey?” Finn’s half out the car.

She waves him off, but there’s no stopping him now. When he gets to her she’s trembling despite the heat and the rosy warmth of her skin. He shrugs out of the jacket and drapes it over her shoulders and walks her back to the car where she sits sipping from the canteen.

“Let me drive. I’ll be _real_ careful, I promise.”

She’s skeptical (he doesn’t blame her), but he can see her resolve wavering. “Just until the next stop.”

As he pulls away he can feel her critical eyes on him—like a driving instructor—watching the way he handles the steering, the transmission shifts, acceleration. But after a while she relaxes into the jacket and closes her eyes. “You’re a pretty good driver, Finn.”

A smile splits his face. “Thanks.”

A sigh, like she knows what he’s doing. “Eyes on the road.”

He does as he’s told, but the grin isn’t going anywhere.

The next stop is a gas station where he buys coffee and sandwiches but she’s barely eats, and when it’s time to head out, she says, “You should drive.”

“You sure?”

She nods. “Don’t get us lost or anything.”

“I won’t.” Even though all he wants to do is get lost with her.

So the Falcon eats up the miles and the only time Finn takes his eyes off the road is to steal a glance at Rey, curled up on the backseat. His overly cautious driving puts them behind schedule and when the light begins to bleed from the sky, Finn makes the decision to pull into a roadside motel.

The room is barebones with dark wood paneling and cigarette-smoke stained terylene curtains that filter the NO VACANCY neon and the headlights from the trucks pulling off the highway. A portrait of a storm-tossed lake, an out-of-place window into another world, hangs above the bed. It’s cheap but neat and cozy in a forgotten sort of way, and it serves its purpose.

Finn sets Rey’s rucksack near the door. “You need anything?”

“No, I’m all right. A good night’s sleep and I’ll be right as rain.”

“Right, okay. Then I’ll see you in the morning.” Finn places the key with the giant plastic teardrop door number in her hand. “Lock the door behind me. I saw a movie about this once. Ax-murderer.”

It’s a joke, to lighten the mood, but a frown dimples the space between her eyes. “Where are you going?”

He looks confused, as if nothing could be more obvious. “The car. They only had a double, so—”

“Finn, don’t be silly.”

“Rey, it’s fine. Really.”

“_Finn.”_ Irritation creeps into her voice. “How is this any different from last night?”

Maybe it’s the formal setting: a real bed with sheets and pillows.

“Listen, if you sleep in the car then I’m going to sleep in the car,” Rey threatens, “and then we’ll both be miserable.” She strips the comforter from the bed. “It’s just _me.” _Like she’s harmless and he should damn well know that by now.

_Just you_.

So they split the bed (Finn on the left, Rey on the right), and lie facing each other, putting the finishing touches on their plans for when they reach the coast. Finally, when the silences grow longer and sleep begins to take them both, Rey reaches out and parenthesizes Finn’s cheek with her palm. “Thank you.”

And he doesn’t have to ask what for, because he knows.

Some other Finn in a galaxy far, far away, a Finn braver than he is, takes her hand in his and presses it to his lips, leans across the space between them and kisses her.

Not this one, though. This Finn is frozen until she removes her hand, tucks it beneath her pillow and shuts her eyes.

“G’night, Finn.”

The space between them is like the gulf between stars.

“Night, Rey.”

He shifts onto his back and lies for a long time in the washed-out-neon-tinted dark.

Regret is wanting to kiss a girl and not kissing her, and knowing now you never will.

The next morning she’s up before him (she’s the one who got all the sleep, after all), hair wet from a shower, toothpaste foaming at the corner of her mouth as she waves a toothbrush around. She’s back to her old self, talking a mile a minute to the twin reflections in the bathroom mirror. “God, I look like a lobster! Lobster. Christ, I’m starving! We should get breakfast—fries, _everything.”_

And Finn just sits there on the edge of the bed, trying to wake up, thinking what it would be like to wake up to this for the rest of his life.

They breakfast at a busy diner attached to a visitor’s center off a geological formation that draws tourist busses. Burger, fries and milkshake for Rey, just the fries for Finn. And he doesn’t mind when she picks at his plate.

“You’re quiet,” she says, eventually.

“Just…thinking about my friend.”

“You mustn’t give up hope,” she says.

But it’s not finding Poe that’s got him subdued, it’s losing Rey. They’ll exchange numbers like promises they’ll never keep. They’re like those tourists out there, milling about in the shade of the busses—only visitors to each other’s lives.

A part of him wishes they could turn the Falcon around and go back, keep crisscrossing the country: a couple of outlaw auto-racers. Or better yet:

_“We should do it.”_

_“Do what?”_

_“The Kessel Run. Recreate it, like you said. You and me.”_

But, of course, he never makes that suggestion and they get in the car, and Rey gets them to the city.

They get good and lost: him trying to work out the GPS on Poe’s phone while she insists they just stop and _ask_ for directions.

“Wait—hold up, this is it!”

Rey slams a heavy foot on the brake pedal and the Falcon jerks to a stop. She leans across Finn to gaze up at the sign hanging over the corner bar: MAZ’S CASTLE. “You sure? Doesn’t look like any castle I’ve ever seen.” Not that she’s ever seen one, really, except in story books—the one or two she could get her hands on. “Looks a bit dodgy if you ask me. You want me to come in with you, suss out the place?

_Yes! You should absolutely do that!_ But it would be for all the wrong reasons; a postponement of the inevitable. “Nah, I’ll be okay. I’ve been in worse places.” Which is the truth. “What about you? You gonna be okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” She waves away his concern. “Don’t worry about me.”

And this time it doesn’t sound funny when she says it. He believes her.

Finally, they’re standing on the sidewalk facing one another like a couple of actors in a play. The final act. The Goodbye. Except there’s no rehearsal, which sucks, because goodbyes are hard.

REY

I hope you find your friend.

FINN

I already have.

_Jesus, who _wrote_ this?_ _I’m not_t_ gonna say _that_._ It’s too corny and she’s _so_ sincere so all Finn says is: “Me, too.”

And, of course, she’s the one to pull him into her arms. Girl’s got moves. A neverletmego hug, and all he can do is hold on until she lets go, gets in the Falcon, and disappears around a corner.

He’s back to standing on the side of that empty highway, waiting to be picked up. To be found. To belong. To a girl named Rey.

When he finds Poe and settles into his new life, her absence gets a little easier to bear. He carries the memory of in his pocket, on his phone, and every now and then he’ll look at the photos of them at their little illegal campsite. He was too drunk to remember taking them and the quality is shit but it’s her and she’s in his arms, smiling cheek to cheek for a grainy selfie.

“Who’s that?” Poe sidles up to him at the bar.

“No one.”

“Don’t look like no one. She’s wearing my jacket so she must be _someone_—excuse me, my _ex_-jacket. Come on, let me see.” Poe helps himself to the phone.

“Hey, that’s _private.”_

Private schmivate. “Technically, this is still my phone, so…” Poe examines the photo. “Pretty girl. Girlfriend?” Off Finn’s withering look: “_Ex_-girlfriend?”

“No, just someone I met on my way out here.”

“Well, what’s her name?”

“None of your business.”

“Nunya Busienss? Dunno, man, she looks more like an Alex or a Sarah.”

Finn scrunches his face up in annoyance, in no the mood for Poe’s shenanigans. “Rey. Her name is _Rey.”_

“Rey. Right.” Poe nods like _yeah, ’course I knew that_. “So what happened?”

“Nothing happened—C’mon, man, give it back”

And there it is. “So, you ever call her?”

“No, why would I—What would I—?”

“Reyyyy.” Poe draws the name out as he navigates the contacts on the phone. “Reyreyrey.” Finds what he’s looking for. “_Rey.”_

“_Poe_. What’re you doing?” He tries, feebly, to grab for the phone but Poe slides smoothly off the barstool. “I swear to _God,_ Dameron—”

“Did you just call me Dameron? Wait, shh-shh-shh—” Poe’s got the phone up to his ear— “it’s ringing.”

Finn stills, listening to his heartbeat, the rush of blood in his ears. Finally, after a quantum of eternity, a breathless voice answers: “Hello?” A pause. “Hello…? Finn? Is that you?” Unsure, wary, like someone talking to air. “Listen, I think you butt-dialled me. I’m going to hang up now. Call me back, okay?”

Poe finally surrenders the phone, or maybe Finn is faster this time. He gets the phone back and takes a deep breath, like the one he took before he leapt from a cliff, hand-in-hand with a girl, the two of them free as wild horses. On a sun-kissed day, back when they were a nation of two. Where the green things are.

“Rey. Don’t hang up.”

**END**


End file.
